Tag: Monster Tales

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A Monsterless Week & Craft Update

Mark this week down in history:  the monsters are going to be gone this week.  They’ve spent a night or two away before, but never all three gone at the same time for this long. 

Princess is going to church camp Tuesday – Friday with her older cousin, over on Lake of the Ozarks by Grandma & Grandpa.  It’s close enough that Grandma plans to go see them at least once.  When she heard that Princess was going, she invited the other two monsters to come spent time with them at the lake too.

So we dropped Littlest and Middle off today.  Princess leaves Tuesday afternoon.  Then we’ll be childless through Friday afternoon when she comes home.  Grandma & Grandpa will bring the two youngest home on Sat. when they drive over for Father’s Day.

That Man and I are celebrating………by working.  *rolls eyes*  Actually, I’m taking Wednesday off so I can dedicate most of the day to writing and Writer Wednesday.

I’ve promised some craft pictures since all our fun classes this summer.  The monsters aren’t here to model their finger-weaving scarves, but I have completed several kitchen scrubbies, crocheted from nylon netting:

Supplies from the class: strips of nylon netting and size J crochet hook.  One yard is supposed to make about 3 scrubbies.

Two completed scrubbies made with one strip each of blue, red, and white (the class had an Independence Day theme).  They’re supposed to be great for cleaning glass stove tops without scratching — which I severely need.

Immediately after the class, Princess and I stopped at Wal-Mart and bought some more netting in various colors. 

Want one?  Comment here and I’ll draw a name.

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Monster Celebrations

With Princess Monster’s birthday on the 5th and Middle’s today, we had a combined birthday party yesterday.  For her birthday dinner, Middle requested homemade chicken & noodles AND chicken & dumplings; Princess requested Old Settler’s Beans.  Aunt BB and Uncle J arranged for a huge, beautiful cake (picture below).  I tried to get a picture of them with the cake, but Middle wouldn’t stand still long enough, and then I finally got a good picture of her, and Princess is rubbing her eye.  (The blue bear is Middle’s bday present from us:  Cutie Pie, a Peace Bear from Build-A-Bear.)

Today, we finally celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas with my Mom (Granny) and my beloved sister, Molly.  We had a blast playin Boggle, and Aunt Molly gave the monsters Twister.  I laughed until my sides hurt!

For the Twister pictures (I tweeted them):  one, two

Birthday pictures:

cake2010

bday2010

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Cookie Monsters

It had sounded like such a good idea….

To thank the Upward Basketball coaches for a great season, I thought we’d make homemade cookies.  Aunt Molly (my beloved Sis) made really cute decorative boxes for the monsters this Christmas, which inspired me.  I could totally see lovely painted boxes filled with delicious homemade cookies!  Oooh, we could put the Upward star on the lid, too…

The first hitch was that the two coaches liked different cookies (peanut butter and chocolate chip).  And of course I didn’t have time to start any of this until the night before the last get-together.  And I didn’t have enough brown sugar — so we all trooped to the grocery store.  I also didn’t have a tried and true peanut butter recipe, so I decided to use the one off the Jiffy jar (I was making Tollhouse cookies anyway).

Meanwhile, we had the decorative boxes to paint.  Two coats because I wanted to be fancy.

One monster opened the paint when I wasn’t looking.  I’m sure you won’t need three guesses to say it was Middle Monster (and you’d be right).  Immediately, she got paint on my island, her shirt, and her toe.  Don’t ask.

Then I forgot and used my Air Bake pans.  I don’t bake cookies often enough to remember that I despise those @Q#&$* pans and I can’t bring myself to throw them out because they cost so much.  I can NEVER get cookies done!  The peanut butter ones didn’t do too badly, but the Tollhouse ones smooshed as soon as I tried to take them off, even after I let them sit a few minutes (and even though I added an extra 1/2 c. of flour).  Grrrrr.  I barely had enough that didn’t look like monster mud pies to include in the box.  The pb cookies aren’t the greatest, either, although they’re not bad.

(I love me a good pb cookie.  One time I lived on them an entire weekend when my high school band teacher dropped me off alone at an All-District Band concert with no transportation and everything on campus was closed.  Thank you, Lord, for Grandma’s PB cookies in the vending machine.)

Then Princess Monster drew the Upward star on top with a black marker and wrote the coaches’ names out.  I wanted the star bigger, but it looked cute the way she did it.  The boxes didn’t look half bad at all.  Even messy monsters can sponge paint!  Hopefully the cookies were a big hit with the coaches.  I know That Man and the monsters looooooved the messy, sticky lumped up Tollhouse cookies, even if it did look like something they made out of clay!

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RX Day 22, 23

I’ve made it semi-dark and early two days in a row but I don’t have a lot to report.  I’m editing previously written sections and smoothing old and new together.  Night Sun Rising is up to 106 pages and I’m getting ready to decide what section kicks off Chapter 6.

We’ve had another scare with Middle Monster.  She threw up in her bed again the other night, but didn’t wake up.  No one knew she’d thrown up.  Of course, immediately I envisioned her choking to death in her sleep.  We bought a baby monitor (our old one was sold in a yard sale years ago) last night, but it picked up every little sound with tons of static, and the bunk beds are really, really squeaky.  At 1 AM, That Man finally turned the damned thing off so we could sleep.  I checked her as soon as I got up this morning and all is well.  We’ll have to tinker with the channel and placement of the monitor so it’s not quite so annoying, yet can still protect her if she does get sick again.

The Evil Day Job is really ramping up this week.  I’ve got a project to turn over for testing by the end of this week and more demands on an even larger one that have waited while I get this other one done, and a little project that has delicate timing moving into production on Monday.  Oh, and I’m out two days next week, which throws a monkey wrench into everything.  It’s amazing, I still have to get my work done even if I’m not in the office.  I still have obligations and deadlines, but now even less time to meet them.

And then I wonder why I still have 120+ hours of vacation to use.  :roll:

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The Plague

I thought Middle Monster was mostly better, but she was up at 4:00 a.m. throwing up again, now joined by Princess Monster and That Man.  Of course, it was one of those nights for me where I simply could not get my brain to shut up, where I wasn’t even sure I ever fell asleep (I know I did, but I was awake every 20-30 minutes).

Needless to say, it was a hot tea morning Dark & Early instead of coffee.  I don’t think the plague is getting to me, rather just a long sleepless night.

I didn’t title this “Revision Xibalba” even though I was up writing, because I didn’t work on the Mayan story.  I finally got a bit of an idea for a short story set in the Beautiful Death Mythomorphoses world.  Well, short story may be stretching the truth a bit.  It’s a “scene” at least.  I have characters and I know their goals.  Whether it makes a satisfying short story, or morphs into something else entirely, I don’t know yet. 

I also began plotting (loosely) the beginning of Return to Shanhasson for NaNoWriMo.  Although I began second guessing myself and wondering if I should try to write Charon’s story instead.  I *know* Return very well, except for the beginning.  I know only a vague beginning to Charon’s story and nothing after.  So Return will definitely be easiest to write fast.  I do need to get the next book done in the other world, though, or Sis is going to hunt me down…  (Charon is her favorite character)

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Fun Day Gone Wrong

The monsters are out of school today, so That Man and I both took the day off.  We had a whole slew of stuff planned:  zoo, maybe a haunted house trip for Princess Monster, shopping, you name it.

However, someone woke me up Dark & Early this morning (when I planned to sleep in) because she’d thrown up in her bed.  She threw up again later, and then started running at both ends.  She didn’t make it to the toilet for one of those either.  Poor little monster is not feeling well at all, and our fun trip day has turned into smelly laundry day.

P.S. As if there was any doubt, the monster in question is Middle Monster.